Things Change // Dr. Daniel Alati

Dr. Daniel Alati explores our relationship to places after strange or jarring events occur, as part of our guest edited month on the theme "Life is Stranger Than Fiction."

Two years ago, I was teaching at Ryerson University. I look back on that semester with particular fondness, because it was the only time I was able to teach a 4th year seminar course that was modeled entirely on my research background and interests: national security and terrorism. On March 22th, I was in my office finalizing my preparation for the week’s class when news of the terrorist attack in Belgium spread through my various news and social media feeds. This news touched me both personally and professionally, as I had been to Brussels several times and had several Oxford colleagues living and working there. At the time, I remember wondering how I could incorporate discussion of this event into the very relevant terrorism seminar I was teaching, whilst still maintaining control over my emotions and professional demeanor. As I sauntered off to my class, I think it’s fair to say that I was feeling a little bit fragile. The walk from my office at Yonge and Gerrard to my class at Church and Gerrard was usually a short, uneventful stroll. It was just before 3 p.m., the sun was shining and there was a general positivity in the air that spring was on its way. As I walked along Gerrard Street, I noticed a man in a wheelchair being pushed in my direction. At first glance, I took very little notice of this, likely still distracted by the aforementioned news about the terror attacks. As the man in the wheelchair came more into visual focus, I realized that both he and the gentlemen pushing him were clearly homeless, and heading directly towards me at a quick pace. As such, I stopped and moved to the left to allow them to pass by, saying “I’m sorry, excuse me.” They both stopped short of passing me; the man pushing the wheelchair jumped out from behind his friend, and then proceeded to lunge towards my genitals yelling “Oh, I’ll make you sorry alright.”I can still remember the exact mixture of emotions that went through my mind at that time. Reflexively, I managed to move backwards, out of his reach and, at first, self-preservation pushed me toward responding to this action physically. Thankfully, though, a simultaneous restraint also flowed through my mind: these people were clearly unwell, I was standing directly outside of my employer’s property, and de-escalation was clearly the most logical choice. I took two steps backward so as to remove myself from touching distance. At this point, other people on the sidewalk had begun to collect, both shocked at what they had witnessed and (probably more so) annoyed that the route to their destinations was being blocked. Perhaps noting the growing collection of potential witnesses, both men decided it would be in their best interests to be on their merry way and, thankfully, walked around me and continued down the street without any further comment or issue. It was like it had never happened. Threaten a stranger with a physical assault for no good reason, and then go on with your day as scheduled. I can guarantee you that neither of them have any recollection of this event, but it has certainly stuck with me over the years.To say that I was rattled in the direct aftermath of this event is an egregious understatement. Looking back on it now, I have no idea how I carried on to class and taught a three hour, in-depth and emotionally charged discussion seminar about terrorism. I can’t really be sure if my students sensed it, but I wasn’t really present. A big part of me couldn’t help but wonder about those affected by the attacks in Brussels, or by any terrorist attack or mass atrocity. If the event that I had just endured (while magnitudes less horrific) had shaken me and forever changed my relationship to the physical space in which it occurred, how must they be feeling? How does someone ever return to a pre-attack mindset? How can you reconcile that experience with your positive memories of the same space? After class, I returned to my office to decompress. Another colleague in my department was working late and I told them the story. They shared a couple of similar experiences they had been through during their time working at Ryerson. This emotional support and shared experience gave me the power and energy I needed to go back out into the Yonge and Dundas wilderness and conquer the next challenge: the Toronto rush hour commute home. Now, my fellow Torontonians will know that on an ordinary day, a TTC commute is filled with any variety of strangeness or inconvenience, but this day was particularly exceptional in regards to the sheer volume of this strangeness. In a 45 minute commute from Yonge and Dundas to the Queen West neighbourhood where I was living at the time, I witnessed the following events, in this order: first, while waiting for the Dundas streetcar, an Evangelical preacher, who frequently confronted people waiting at that stop with wonderful musings about how they were going to hell, almost incited a riot. Fuck this, I thought, that’s enough strange for one day, I’ll take the subway. After traveling underground into Dundas station, I saw two police officers holding a person with their face to the ground as he screamed a variety of inaudible garble. It was like every direction I turned that day I was confronted with some form of chaos. I kept coming back in my mind to the attacks in Brussels. If these relatively “mundane” experiences of strangeness were adding up and taking their toll on me, how intense must their feelings be after such a horrific event? I imagined them having similar feelings and wants: just to be home safe, with family and loved ones, away from the noise and chaos and in a comfortable space. I got off the subway, eager to quickly get out of that area and onto the Queen streetcar home. Just when I thought the day’s strangeness quota had come to an end, a lovely fellow on the Queen streetcar decided to show all of us his penis. That person was quickly “encouraged” off the vehicle by the driver and an angry mob of people who, in the greatest (i.e., only) showing of TTC solidarity I’ve ever seen, made it unanimously clear that this behaviour was unwelcome. Believe me when I tell you that when I arrived home safely that day it was one of the greatest experiences of relief I have ever felt in my life. Any one of those events in isolation would be considered strange, but all of them together in a five hour span? It was like a fundamental rewriting of the relationship I had with the city, and with the spaces I occupied. The places I thought I knew well had become unfamiliar and threatening. With the benefit of hindsight and reflection, I am now able to look back on that day’s events as part and parcel of an ordinary day in a loud, chaotic, densely populated, and socio-economically disparaged city. I know it’s inherently problematic to compare the events that I experienced that day with what was experienced in Brussels, or with any other horrific event with such loss of life and attendant shock on the public consciousness—and I would never try to compare the two. Nonetheless, I think they can be situated on a spectrum of sorts, and parallels can be drawn. Bear with me here as I try and flesh this out: most people who read this will naturally feel that a terrorist attack is situated so far right on the strangeness spectrum that there could be no connection or parallel with the other events detailed in this piece. This would be a justifiable feeling, but I would respectfully argue that the common element is the way that such events forever change an individual and the way they feel in the place where they’ve experienced such an event. To this day, I remember the attempted assault every single time I walk down that strip of road. My awareness of my surroundings is always heightened. Even though it’s been years, and although I’ve processed it, it’s still with me on some level. I’d imagine anyone who was touched by the attacks in Brussels—or any attack for that matter, whether on a national or a personal scale—feels the same way when they walk through the area in which the attack occurred. The physical space is forever changed, and the way they live in it will never quite be the same. What are we to do with that? How can we make sense of our fluid relationship to places, cities, homes? How can we fix those spaces so as to stop them from becoming strange to us, to stop ourselves from becoming strangers in those spaces? I don’t know that I have an answer. I don’t know that there is an answer. But one thing we can do for each other is to provide anchor points for our friends and loved ones—give each other new things to hold onto, regardless of what the space in question is. We can’t control public spaces, and we can’t control what happens in them, but we can create communities that transcend the physical locations they occupy. By doing that, we can help each other move forward—and, hopefully, shape the way we relate to the world we walk through in a positive way, regardless of what should happen there. 

Dr. Daniel Alati is a university professor by day and a restaurant server by night. His academic passion for research and teaching (in the fields of national security, international law and comparative criminal justice) and his personal passion for travel has brought him from Toronto to Oxford to Hong Kong and back to Toronto again. His published works have primarily been for an academic audience, including his 2017 book Domestic Counter-Terrorism in a Global World. In his spare time, he runs triathlons and marathons for charity, binge watches anything on HBO, drinks scotch, and generally lives his life as an exercise in contradictions. He is as proud to be a Canadian as he is to be the son of two Italian immigrant parents, to whom he credits all of his most substantial life achievements. He will soon assume a position as an Assistant Professor at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.